White Tiger
Trust Me
offline
Registered: Mar 2004
Local time: 06:32 AM
Location: The Historic City of Portsmouth, England
Posts: 2536
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Alright.
I'll give you the fact that he conquered most of Europe with his mighty columns. I'll concede that he almost reached England and his Empire could compare to the Great British Empire at the time.
I'll even confess to being sorry for him for having to deal with Admiral Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington one after the other.
But to think that all that stood between Napoleon and the conquering of the world was the fact that he didn't switch his collomns to Lines when facing the British is ridicules.
Admittedly he probably wouldn't have beaten the British navy but that is besides the point.
He had the superior numbers and guns at Waterloo and he couldn't beat the British forces just because he marched in collomns instead of lines.
Collomns are fine against ill-disciplined armies because they are an impressive sight but only the men in the front few rows can fire until they break the enemies army into two and then they can destroy the opposing forces.
But against the well-disciplined, well-rained British line the collomns would loose every time.
The ridicules thing is that Napoleon had lost France to Wellington a few years before Waterloo. He should have learnt his lesson then and changed how he fought the british but he didn't, and lost because of it.
Just think, if Napoleon had been a wiser man he would have conquered all of Europe and left the British with our small little island and the rest of our Empire.
Despite what might have happened on land the French were always inferior to the British on sea.
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"there's only one way to win a war: shout, shout, and shout again!" - The Duke of Wellington ((Blackadder - Stephen Fry)) |
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01-29-2006 01:29 AM
